Pittsburgh Cemeteries

A tombstone for a young mother and her child. Elizabeth died at two months in 1839. Two months later her mother died as well. Did she die of the same disease? Cholera was very popular in Pittsburgh in the 1830s, but there seems to have been a lull in the epidemics in 1839. Perhaps Nancy died of grief, as mothers often did in those days. (Today we would look for another diagnosis, but modern medical science agrees that psychological factors play a large role in the body’s ability to overcome serious ailments.) Grief also reached epidemic proportions in the nineteenth century, when childhood mortality was, by our standards, appalling.

_The composite picture above is more than 75 megapixels. Expect about 22 megabytes of data if you click on it._

This is without a doubt the most spectacular Egyptian mausoleum in Pittsburgh. All the usual Egyptian elements are here, but the Winter mausoleum (1930)—whose colossal scale is hard to convey in a photograph—adds its own unique accessories. John Russell Pope, the famous beaux-arts architect, designed this mausoleum for banker Emil Winter—but “designed” is not really the right word here. The Woolworth mausoleum in Woodlawn, the Bronx, is nearly identical; Winter apparently saw it and told Pope “I want that,” and Pope gave it to him.

Mr. Winter’s amazing sphinxes bear an expression that old Pa Pitt can only describe as “snooty.”

The bronze door depicts Mr. Winter himself, large as life and in full Pharaonic regalia, about to set off for his journey into the afterlife. Even this is identical to the bronze door of the Woolworth mausoleum, except for the substitution of Mr. Winter’s face.

Inside is a stained-glass window that reminds Father Pitt of cheap illustrated Sunday-school handouts, showing Mr. Winter properly enthroned. (It was devilishly hard to get a picture of this window, because the front doors are actually backed by a mesh screen. This was the best old Pa Pitt could do.)

According to the cemetery’s Web site, this is probably the monument for Verlinda Stevens, who died in 1872. The marble is so badly eroded that we cannot read any of the inscriptions, but even—or perhaps especially—in this state it is quite picturesque.

A Lithuanian tombstone in a good state of preservation. European immigrants tended to bring with them their memories of what a gravestone should look like, so we find very different styles in different ethnic groups. This is a common East European style. The East European tombstones here were often decorated in very shallow relief, much of which has vanished in a century or so of erosion; but this crucifix is still visible in outline, though the details are lost.

With the help of Google Translate, here is the inscription:

IN MEMORY OF
WIKTORIA BERNATOWICZ
BORN 1860
DIED FEBRUARY 9, 1918
ETERNAL REST

A simple rectangular stone is unusual in this era. This stone commemorates two Andrew Russels (note the spelling of the name). The first died in 1808 at six years old. (If a tombstone says “in the x_th year of his age,” it usually means the deceased was _x years old, though technically an x-year-old is in the x+1 year of his age.) The second died in 1814 at 82 years old, so he was probably a great-grandfather of the first.

Father Pitt believes that this stone was put up in 1808, and the inscription for Andrew Russel, Sr., added in 1814. His evidence is, first, the word “Also,” and second, a demonstrable difference in the styles of lettering between the two inscriptions. The second is well matched to the first, but probably by a different hand, one that made thinner letters—or possibly by the same stonecutter after six more years of practice.

IN MEMORY OF
ANDREW M. RUSSEL
who died
Feb,y 27th 1808;
in the 6th year of his age.
—
ALSO
ANDREW RUSSEL, Senr
died
June 20th 1814;
in the 82nd year of
his age.

Well, here is an interesting little mystery. There is some story behind this triple monument, but old Pa Pitt has not been able to unravel it. His usually fruitful speculative imagination has failed him. If anyone knows the real story of the monument, a comment below would be very welcome.

This triple monument commemorates three people named Barrett. Hannah Barrett died in 1864 at the age of 25; William Barrett died in 1868 at the age of 24; and Dennis Barrett hasn’t died yet. Well, clearly he has, since we have not heard of any 150-year-old Barretts roaming the earth; but his death date has never been filled in.

Now, who were these people? It is not impossible that William and Hannah were husband and wife, though she was five years older than he was, and he would have been only twenty when she died. The position of the stones seems to make that unlikely, however. Hannah takes precedence—again, not impossible, but every nineteenth-century instinct would have made a husband and wife’s monuments equal, or the husband’s the central and higher one. And who was Dennis? A son? A father?

It seems more likely that they were brother and sister, Hannah taking precedence because she was the elder. And then who is Dennis? Was he another brother who was still alive when the monument was bought? One can imagine the conversation with the monument salesman: “You have that other son, too, right? What’s his name—Dennis? He’s coming up on twenty now, and the way your family’s going you’ll need a stone for him in four or five years. It happens we’re having a three-for-the-price-of-two special this week only, so…”

If Dennis was a brother who lived a long life afterwards, it would explain why his stone was never filled in. He might well have married, fathered children, and been buried in his own family plot fifty or sixty years later, possibly in another part of the country.

One final question: When was the stone bought? Father Pitt’s eye for cemetery styles suggests that it’s more likely to have been in 1868, when William died, than in 1864, when Hannah died. Did Hannah go without a marker for her grave for four years? Or did the family purchase a monument for all three when Hannah died, on the principle that everybody’s got to go sometime?

Three different burials in the same family plot show us three different styles of early-settler tombstones.

Jacob Bell lived the longest of the three: he was buried in 1842. Shortly after that, local stonecutters would begin to be replaced by more centralized businesses, so this is one of the last of what Father Pitt would call the early-settler tombstones. It does not seem as elegantly cut or proportioned as the earlier tombstones, which makes us wonder whether the stonecutter’s craft was already fading. The inscription reads:

SACRED to the MEMORY OF JACOB BELL, Who departed this life, Nov. 18th 1842 in the 75th year of his age.

Elizabeth Bell, Jacob’s “consort” (the stonecutters’ preferred term for “wife”), died in 1829, and her tombstone is typical of the time. It is not as elaborately cut as some other 1820s tombstones, but compare it to Jacob’s and see how much better formed the individual letters are, and how much more carefully laid out the lines are in the inscription.

IN Memory of ELIZABETH BELL, Consort of JACOB BELL Who departed this life January 13th A.D. 1829 in the 58th year of her age.

Finally, Charity Bell, who was probably a daughter of Jacob and Elizabeth, died in 1832, and was given a tombstone of the Gothic shape popular in the 1830s. The lettering is done very well (non-standard spelling of the month notwithstanding), and the stonecutter has added the tree ornament—probably intended as a weeping willow—that we commonly see on early-settler tombstones.

IN MEMORY OF CHARITY BELL Who departed this life Aprile the 6th A.D. 1832 in the 35 year of her age

This triple tombstone, the only one of its kind from its era that Father Pitt has ever seen, remembers three Allison children who all died in January of 1836. The cause of death is not stated, but it must have been some childhood disease that carried them off one after another. Scarlet fever is a likely candidate.